According to foreign media reports, British battery startup Volklec is working with Chinese battery supplier Far East Battery to build a £1 billion super battery factory in the UK.
Volklec, based in Coventry, UK, is supported by British investment firm Frontive Group. Frontive Group is funded by brothers Imran Khatri and Sameer Khatri, former investors in another British battery company, British Volt, who tried to get it out of the bankruptcy administration process two years ago to get it out of the situation.
It is reported that Volklec has reached a long-term agreement with Far East Battery to utilize its engineers, manufacturing expertise and raw materials supply. Volklec hopes to raise £1 billion to build a 10 GWh plant in the UK, saying it will create more than 1,000 jobs by 2030.
Volklec hopes to avoid repeating the mistakes of the bankrupt business Britishvolt, which was partly due to its attempt to build a factory without customers and battery supplies. The collapse of Britishvolt has cost Britain its domestic battery leader. However, there are still several battery factories under construction in the UK, including a factory operated by Jaguar Land Rover’s parent company Tata, and another one operated by Envision’s AESC, a Nissan auto supplier that already operates a super battery factory in the northeast of the UK.
If Volklec’s factory building plan is successful, Volklec will become the only large independent battery manufacturer in the UK after the collapse of Britishvolt in 2023.
“Our approach is pragmatic and aims to be able to quickly enter the market and be profitable quickly,” said Volklec executive director Phil Popham, who was formerly a senior executive at Jaguar Land Rover.
Phil Popham hopes to learn from past lessons, including the recent collapse of Northvolt, the largest battery company in Europe. He said that previous battery companies were too ambitious in technology research and development and factory construction, resulting in failure to achieve their goals on time and losing investor confidence.
Volklec has adopted a more pragmatic strategy and plans to start producing cylindrical high-nickel batteries for electric bicycles and energy storage starting from the second half of this year using its existing facilities, the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre in Coventry. The centre is a £130 million pilot project built by the government to test battery production technology.
Starting next year, Volklec aims to produce power battery cells for the automotive, aerospace and marine sectors. Phil Popham said the company is in talks with potential customers, targeting small-volume manufacturers that cannot build their own superbattery factories.
He said that only after having a stable customer base and internal development capabilities will the company consider building its own superbattery factory. This is another difference between Volklec and Britishvolt, which had previously tried to build a factory before getting an order.
“This is a roadmap to localization. Our ideal is not only to build our own superbattery factory, but to be a catalyst for building a battery supply chain in the UK,” Popham said.